M-Ocean View

Word is that Mayor Ed Lee actually rode Muni yesterday, and nobody got a photo. Don’t get excited: He wasn’t actually trying to get from point A to point B like the rest of us. It was more of a publicity stunt for the mayor’s transportation bond campaign. The San Francisco Chronicle’s editorial board rode the Muni with the mayor, according to SFGate:

Mayor Ed Lee, who is trying to raise $1 million in campaign cash to push his $500 million transportation bond over the finish line in the Nov. 4 election, got a firsthand taste of Muni’s problems on Tuesday morning.

Lee, who lives in Glen Park, took the M-Ocean View train downtown before a meeting with The Chronicle’s editorial board, and no, he didn’t get a seat.

Well, at least this time the mayor won’t get a ticket by parking in the Muni zone! Unfortunately riders didn’t snap a photo of him (unless you did, in which case, send it our way!). We never saw former Mayor Gavin Newsom on the bus ourselves, but SF Citizen snapped a photo of him on Muni, sitting in the elderly/handicapped seating (insert joke here).(more…)

I was in school at SF State at the time, merrily (sarcasm) commuting my way to the outer reaches of San Francisco on a daily basis. Classes were over for the day, and as I approached the intersection of 19th Avenue and Holloway, I saw the M-Ocean View I needed. The crosswalk timer was counting down, and I made a dash for it.

Real quickly: That thing where you’re walking and one ankle just randomly completely collapses. What’s that called?

Whatever it’s called, that’s what happened to me. While I was running. For Muni.

I slipped and skidded across the light-rail tracks, probably 15-20 feet in front of the train and its driver. He saw the whole thing happen. He had front-row seats, in fact.

Still wanting desperately to get that train, I picked myself up off the tracks and hobbled my way up the platform. The laws of the universe at that exact moment conspired to close the doors to the open vehicle and have it begin to pull away.

I got close enough to bang on the windows, thinking all the while that the driver had to have seen me, that there was no way he’d really leave me there, broken and without a ride home.

Within eight seconds or so, I realized what had happened. And it was at that moment that I decided I would never run for Muni ever again.

I was on Muni going to work at City Hall, and all of a sudden I started hearing the faint sounds of an older lady talking. It didn’t sound like English; it sounded a lot like mumbo jumbo “boo bee ba da do bee bo.” She was an older lady with gray hair that didn’t looked combed or washed, and she had a brown trenchcoat on. She was reading the book Les Miserables, out loud, in French. I guess it sounded like mumbo jumbo because of her high-pitched voice and lack of English. Everyone was staring at her as though she were a maniac. I, however, went from extremely annoyed to overjoyed and it sounded like music to my ears. Why? because the story of Les Mis is incredible and genius. I wanted to egg her on and have a legit conversation about the book, but I was 100 percent sure that she didn’t speak English, so I kept my musical theater nerd knowledge to myself.